Green Smoothies

Katrina has been trying to convince me to embrace the “Green Smoothie Revolution”. For those of you who aren’t aware of it, and I certainly wasn’t, it’s an eating plan based on the concept of adding more fruits and vegetables to your daily diet by blending them together in a blender and consuming them as liquids. Sounds simple, but believe me, it is far more complicated than you can imagine. And I have been very reluctant to even try ONE smoothie. I finally agreed to make one this weekend and to supply photographic evidence of my compliance. I felt I owed Katrina that in exchange for all the years I tortured her with “just try one bite” or “you might like it if you taste it” and all the other parent ploys designed to introduce healthy foods to our children.

My first hesitation came at just reading the subtitle of the book! “The Radical Leap Towards Natural Health” did not seem to match my personality. I’ve been known to experiment a little, and take a risk or two, but radical? So not me.

I also have a little bit of a problem with some of the statements made in the book:

“I was able to trick my body into consuming a large amount of greens without any resistance.” Now, I’m pretty sure that my mind is going to remember what I put into the blender! J

“…if you keep consuming kale, or spinach, or any other single green for many weeks without rotation, eventually the same type of alkaloids can accumulate in your body and cause unwanted symptoms of poisoning.”

“…all wild plants possess more nutrients than commercially grown plants.”“I enjoy the rich flavor and slightly bitter taste of weeds.” Thankfully she includes a list of twenty-two toxic plants to avoid picking for your smoothie!

“Sometimes I drink only one quart, but more often I drink two, three, and even four quarts a day.” Okay, how does she have the time to do that, and how often does the woman go to the bathroom, because I just don’t get that many breaks in my teaching day!

“Drink your smoothie by itself, and not as a part of a meal. To get the most nutritional benefits out of your green smoothie, don’t consume anything, even as little as a cracker, with it. You can eat anything you want approximately forty minutes before or after your smoothie.” Okay, folks, figure the forty minutes with the 2-4 quarts of smoothies consumed per day and get back to me with the math, because I can’t figure out the scheduling.

Okay, Kat, I tried the smoothie this morning and failed miserably. First of all my blender just isn’t up to the task of the “smooth” part. The author says that you have to have a “strong blender” and she meant it! She says, “If you don’t have a powerful blender, you can still make green smoothies and benefit from them, but you will have to chop your ingredients into smaller pieces, blend for longer periods of time, and put up with some chunks in your smoothie.” Amen. My smoothie had some undesirable chunks in it and felt gritty.

Also, my smoothie wasn’t the pretty color that is advertised, and that Katrina shows on her posts. I think that is because I didn’t add a banana. I haven’t been able to eat them for about a year, so I didn’t add one to my smoothie.

The taste wasn’t bad- mostly strawberry. It dominated the spinach taste. And I like spinach.